Sligo Rovers and WA Warriors

Yesterday was a day of sport. A one day cricket match at the WACA here in Perth. The Western Australia Warriors were beaten by the Queensland Bulls in the second last over. We had great seats in the members enclosure thanks to one of the famous sporting Marsh family.

Geoff Marsh is an Australian cricket legend, just appointed as Sri Lanka national cricket coach, and his two sons are also making names for themselves. Shaun is on the Australian test team at present in South Africa and Mitchell has just returned from playing in the Australian one day team in South Africa. An all-rounder, he played for the Warriors yesterday, bowling above. He was out for one run but then took four wickets. Their sister Melissa is a prominent member of the West Coast Waves basketball team.

The ground still has one of those wonderful old manual scoreboards. The game started just after 11 and finished after 6. For those of us brought up on games of 60 or 90 minute duration cricket is such a different experience, a long period of time made up of  a large number of short intense face to face encounters.

Then the FAI Cup Final which started at 11.30 pm local time and was over at 2.30 am. I watched it on RTE.ie. Another great win for Sligo Rovers with lots of drama and many talking points. Irish Times report here.

The nice thing about it was the number of reasons Shelbourne supporters have for complaining and giving themselves that good, righteous feeling that they should have won: the sending off, the referee obviously being on Sligo's side - look at all the yellow cards he gave Shelbourne players! - the goalkeeper moving off the line, etc. etc.

So Sligo Rovers win the cup and Shelbourne get all the sympathy - seems like a fair bargain and one we'll take anyday. This was their third cup appearance in a row and their second win in a row - what about three in a row next year.

By the way for some reason I'm not able to make comments on Blogger while here, on this one or on others, but can read them of course so thanks to those who have commented.